Review: 'Babies' boils down what we all have in common

Thomas Balmes’ “Babies” is a deeply ingenious film that takes the most bare-bones concept and derives exemplary moments of cinema and insights into the nature of humanity from it.

Balmes and company filmed the first years of four babies lives: little girls from San Francisco, Tokyo and a Namibian village, and a boy from the plains of Mongolia. In tracking the development and environments of this quartet of infants, the film opens windows on to the gradual formation of human consciousness; the universal concepts of home, mother, family and household; the relationship of the individual to the culture into which he or she is born; the connection of humans to pets, clothes, food, music, and bodily functions; and much, much more.

Our little Mongol lad, for instance, has a sadistic older brother but discovers, in a remarkable sequence, that crying out about the bigger boy’s abuses brings mommy’s wrath on the wrongdoer (in another scene, big brother frames the tot for making a mess, and another, more bitter lesson, is learned). In San Francisco, a girl raised with a comical excess of material goods and parental caution discovers, to her horror, that the nib at the end of a banana isn’t as yummy as the rest of it. In Tokyo, frustration with a simple stacking toy leads to a tantrum worthy of an operatic diva. In Namibia, children casually play in mud and dirt and poop and nurse with seemingly any mom in the village, and nobody calls in an ambulance or child services or a personal injury lawyer.

The film is virtually dialogue-free, beautifully shot and framed and cut, playful in its juxtapositions, serious in its cold-eyed attention to human silliness, joy, pain, glory and love. It’s essential in the sense of getting to the bottom of both the art of documentary filmmaking and the discovery of what it is that makes people -- all of us, everywhere -- tick.

Some people can’t stand babies (they were born grown-up and miserable is my guess), but if you were ever a baby or took care of a baby or have ever seen a baby in life or on film, something in “Babies” will capture your eye -- and, probably, your fancy.